Once for Scotland Catch Up

 

I enjoy catching sessions from Once for Scotland on the first Thursday of each month.  It is great to hear about all of the joined-up digital initiatives in the national pipeline.  I do think many of these initiatives need more public awareness. There are a lot of potentially really good things happening. If you work across the public sector in Scotland you really should sign up for Once for Scotland. 

The initiative does not have a brand or logo, so I got AI to make one up. 

This month we got updates on 

Scottish Government Digital Mailbox 

The Scottish Government Digital Mailbox is a national digital communication platform designed to provide the people of Scotland with a single, secure location for receiving correspondence from public sector organisations. Following a successful CivTech challenge, and based on the Danish Digital Post system used population wide, the Scottish Government invested in the core infrastructure through Netcompany's AMI platform, integrating it with ScotAccount for trusted identity verification and the Scottish Government Cloud Platform to establish a scalable national service. The platform is now operational and forms part of key strategic programmes including the Digital Front Door (MyCare), providing a foundation for secure digital communications across health and wider public services in Scotland. The focus has now shifted from building the platform to driving adoption, onboarding public bodies, and realising the benefits of a shared national service. This supports the ambitions of the Sustainable Digital Public Services Delivery Plan, which aims to move 25% of public sector correspondence to digital channels by 2030 and deliver potential savings of more than £100 million per year through reduced printing, postage and administration costs.

I can see this as a great tool if adopted by organisations like Qualifications Scotland. 

ScotPayments – 

ScotPayments the payment service designed by and built for government, including background information, progress to date, what the programme is working towards and opportunities to become involved.

 Local Government Architecture Model 

The Local Government Architecture Model (LGAM) is an evolving shared framework for describing the technology councils need to deliver local public services. Creating a common language across local government to support collaboration, technology planning and the adoption of reusable solutions across the sector. 

ScotAccount v MyGovscot Accounts

Many citizens will be trying to understand the difference between their ScotAccount and their Mygovscot account, if they have set one or both up.  Here is a quick table guide. 

Feature	ScotAccount	mygovscot myaccount
Who runs it	Scottish Government	Local councils / Improvement Service
Purpose	National digital identity	Local council service login
Identity verification	Yes (photo ID or security questions)	No
Typical use	PVG, disclosures, MyCare.scot, Redress, DAS	Council tax, bins, schools, benefits
2FA	Yes	Sometimes
Reuse across services	Yes (national)	Yes (local authority only)
Interoperability	Separate from myaccount	Separate from ScotAccount